


build me no shrines

by fishycorvid



Series: build me no shrines [1]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: A little bit of fluff, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Amy gets hurt, Amy loves Jake so much :’), Angst, Crime, F/M, Sergeant Amy Santiago, blame @dmigod on tumblr for this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-20 07:14:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14890004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishycorvid/pseuds/fishycorvid
Summary: A run-in in a back alley on what should have been a normal day on patrol. Sergeant Amy Santiago goes left. Officer Gary Jennings goes right. And Jake sits at his empty desk at the precinct, tapping his pen on his desk, a song without rhythm.Something bad goes down.





	build me no shrines

It happens like this: her sergeant’s boots beat out a steady, even pattern against the concrete. Her hand rests on the pistol at her side. Her hair is pulled back into a crisp, flawless ponytail. **  
**

(Jake, at the precinct, sits at his desk, tapping his pen idly against his temple, staring at his paperwork.)

Jennings calls to her from a few paces behind, “I don’t know if you already heard, but I just got radioed that there was another B&E nearby. We think it might be connected to the recent string in the area.”

Amy turns but does not stop walking. “How nearby?”

The officer squints at his phone. “Two blocks up and one over.”

She breaks into a quicker but still even gait.

(He lifts his head as Rosa drags a perp in through the elevator. The guy is spitting curses at her, but she doesn’t seem to care, manhandling him through the bullpen. Jake laughs a little at her annoyed but somehow still disinterested expression, and goes back to his paperwork, ballpoint knocking arrhythmically against his skin. For some reason, he can’t get himself to focus, even more so than usual.)

Gary rushes at her heels, and though he’s focused, Amy can almost feel the elation and anticipation rising off of him like steam off water. She laughs a little and shakes her head.

“First chase?” she asks, and he grins widely, nodding. “It’s a good feeling. However good you’re thinking, it’s better.”

(If Jake was there, he’d make a joke, something about sex tapes, but he’s not, so he doesn’t.)

Gary and Amy smile ruefully for different reasons. “Let’s get going then, Sergeant!” Jennings pulls ahead of her, and she almost laughs, until he draws back, a sheepish smile on his face, to match her pace perfectly, and then she does laugh. “What is it?” he asks hesitantly, like maybe he shouldn’t be getting personal while they’re chasing a perp, or ever, for that matter.

“Nothing, just--” she chuckles a little, and speeds up a bit. “You remind me a lot of myself, Jennings.”

(Jake grins suddenly and pops up his head to make a joke, only to remember at the sight of an empty desk that he doesn’t have anybody sitting across from him anymore.)

If she turned around, she would see the incredulous, wide smile on his face, but she doesn’t. In front of them, only a few yards away, a man with an overflowing bag is dashing across the street, looking around furtively.

“Stop!” Gary shouts in perfect unison with Amy, and for a moment, the man freezes, before backing up through the crosswalk and turning to sprint away.

“Shit,” Amy mumbles under her breath, and races after him, Jennings in hot pursuit. “You there! Stop!”

Around them, civilians turn to stare, most of them with annoyed looks on their face.

(Jake hums a theme he remembers from a documentary Amy had them watch after a Die Hard marathon, because, quote, she wanted to feel cultured again, unquote. He smiles a little, fond.)

There’s a fire in her lungs from running and her blood seems to thrum through her veins at an almost painfully high rate. She feels alive again, chasing down criminals, reading them their rights, fingers curled around a gun, working on puzzles--

Amy can’t see the robber anymore.

“Where’d he--” Jennings gasps out, skidding to a stop and almost crashing into her.

The sergeant spits out a curse and turns on her heel. “Jennings, go that way. I’ll check out the alleys.” There’s unease on her officer’s face, and he taps a finger against his gun.

“Sergeant, I don’t know if--”

Amy stares him down. “Go. We’ll lose him if you spend any time arguing with me.” Gary sighs harshly and begins running again, loping across the pavement, gun in hand.

Systematically, Amy begins to canvass the alleyways, gun extended out in front of her. She misses catching the bad guy, the gravel crunching under her shoes, the tension in the air of a final showdown, but she, too, feels the uneasiness that had been evident in Gary’s expression, and she slows down on her third alley.

Behind her, the thud of heavy boots. A man jumps, catlike, off a dumpster, the bag left behind. Instead, clutched in steady hands, a gun.

“Put your hands up,” he growls, and then jerks his gun towards hers. “And drop your weapons.”

Reluctantly, she concedes. The firearm makes a clattering noise that seems almost tinny as it falls to the ground.

(“There’s been a B&E in the precinct. One in a string,” Charles tells him from across the bullpen, and Jake hums disinterestedly.

“B&Es happen all the time, Boyle. Anyways, it’s the beat cops’ job,” he says. “No identifiable pattern or tie. No evidence it’s even the same guy. As long as they catch him in the act, it’s not our problem.”)

The man edges towards her, gun pointed directly at her chest. “What are you?”

She snorts humorlessly. “I’m a cosplayer. Ever heard of _Serve & Protect?”_

He laughs, just as dry, and in a single, fluid movement, darts and presses the gun against her throat. “Tell the truth or I’ll blow you to goddamn bits.”

“I’m Amy Santiago, sergeant of the NYPD.” She swallows, and the cold metal presses in further.

“I know that name,” he half-says and half-sneers. The gun lifts away a little. “In the papers.”  _Damnit, Charles._ A grin widens on his face. “You’re the wife of Jake Peralta.”

A part of her, the idiotic and sarcastic part that she thinks Jake made more prevalent, thinks, _Wow, this time it’s not even my nemesis._

“You know, almost everyone I cared about went to prison because of that bastard,” he drawls.

“Ianucci,” Amy says, and it’s not a question.

“Yeah. So,” he says, almost lazily pressing the gun back into her neck. She exhales sharply and tilts her head back, trying her best to squirm away. “I wonder if he knows how it feels. Losing everything like that.” A tilt of the head, almost curious and inquisitive.

There’s a sharp, calculating shine now in his eyes, and she doesn’t know what it will mean.

(Tap, tap, tap.)

Until he lowers the gun to her abdomen, pulls the trigger, and watches the nervousness on her face turn into agony.

(Tap tap tap.)

Amy Santiago crumples to the ground, vision instantly blurred at the edge like water spilled over once-sharp ink. Already, she can feel the blood seeping through her uniform. And she knows, she _knows_ , by the time Gary figures out something is wrong and maybe finds her blood-soaked in an alley, it will very likely be too late.  


Ianucci stands over her, gun still pointed at her. “Don’t try to move. It’ll only make things worse.” He flashes her a wry, dark grin. “You know deserve what you’re getting.”

She tries to inhale, tries to speak, but the fire is back in her lungs and this time it’s tearing her fragile muscle tissue and bones and skin apart.

(Taptaptap.)

Operating on instinct alone, Amy grabs at her pockets for her phone, for her radio, for anything, but the Ianucci chuckles quietly and pins her hand down with a boot, crushing it into the ground, and she almost screams, biting down on her lip until it bleeds to keep herself from making a sound.

A soft tsking, and he reaches into her pocket and fishes out the devices, waving them in front of her face. Blood is coppery and hot in her mouth.

“Speak of the devil,” Ianucci murmurs, casually glancing at her phone. “Guess who just texted?” A smile curls its sharp way through his cheeks. “It’s the man himself.” He laughs. “Jakey P. Should I take a picture and send it to him, or would that be a bit much?”

Her breath stutters out of her lungs, laborious and aching; it’s an effort to keep herself from passing out, even without her hand trapped under the boot.

“Well. Guess I’ll wait for one of your idiots to get here, and you’ll have to, too. Fair warning, though: odds are you bleed out.”

“Get the fuck away from me,” Amy snarls, and the man laughs and stomps her phone and radio into the ground with his free foot. Shards of plastic and glass skitter towards her, making a taunting clinking noise against the asphalt.

“I’d say you should tell Peralta I said hello, but you and I both know you’re going to die before he makes it here.”

_(Taptaptap.)_

He lifts his boot off her hand, picks up his bag and both guns, and strolls away almost nonchalantly. Amy can feel her hands shaking, her full body shaking, and tears are stinging at her eyes and blood is at the corner of her mouth and she can barely breathe anymore.

* * *

Gary takes a looping path through the streets of the Ninety-Ninth precinct warily. There’s something tugging at the edge of his head that he’s trying to ignore, because _direct orders, Jennings, you can’t forget, you can’t disobey a superior officer, especially not Sergeant Santiago._ And yet. His sergeant hasn’t radioed back to him for-- he checks his watch-- exactly thirteen minutes and forty-seven seconds, which is a far cry from the protocol five minutes (and if there’s anything he and Santiago love, it’s protocol).  


(Jake wonders if it’s too early in the day to visit Amy down on the third floor, and subconsciously, his fingers flit over his wedding band.)

His feet freeze in their tracks against his command in the middle of the crosswalk. Around him, people mutter and glare, but he’s frozen, he’s frozen, and he remembers the shot of a gun from exactly-- another watch check-- eight minutes and twenty-four seconds ago, and then Gary Jennings is running, running, running, shoving past men and women who yell at him and children who point and teenagers who curse loudly and hell, even other police officers. He doesn’t apologize, staggering against the flow of the crowd. He doesn’t make a noise, just scrambles through the maze of people, bouncing off bodies and windows and walls, falling off the sidewalk, and he doesn’t give a damn.

The officer races in and out of alleys, and as if from far away, he can feel the scratch at his lungs _(damn it, Jennings,_ he can hear the sergeant saying, _why the hell don’t you bring your inhaler with you on patrol?)_ and he wheezes aloud, “I can make you proud without breathing, Sarge,” and people are giving him funny looks but that’s okay, really, because he’s been running for three minutes and thirty-nine seconds and he hasn’t found anything yet, maybe it was just a firework, maybe it was a misfiring--

And then he’s skidding to a stop at the entrance to another alleyway, and Gary can taste the blood in the air, hear the rasping the breath of a woman dying, and he can see his sergeant, _he can see his sergeant,_ sprawled on the ground with a disfigured, crushed hand and she’s laying in dark liquid, and--

“Sergeant?” he says (shrieks, but he can barely hear himself think, much less speak), and she barely even stirs. He rushes to her side, kneels, feels his a hot, viscous liquid seep in through his pants and settle on his skin. “Sergeant Santiago, I--”

Her intact hand seizes on his sleeve, but her whole body is stained with drying blood and she’s shaking so hard he can feel himself shuddering with her. “Call my husband,” she gasps out, squeezing her eyes shut, and Gary pretends not to see the tears slipping through blood. “Compress the wound. I--” she coughs, and blood comes out with the air. He fights the urge to retch.  
  
“Okay, okay, I---” he fumbles for his phone, breathing hard and fast, and plugs in each stuttered, broken number.

(His phone buzzes in his pocket. He takes it out. It’s a number he doesn’t recognize, but on a whim, he answers.)

“Mr. Peralta?”

(He doesn’t recognize the voice, either, but it’s scared and shaking, and his first instinct is to protect.)

A calm, steady, vaguely confused voice that sounds almost foreign comes through the phone. “Don’t worry, don’t worry, just breathe. Who are you?”

“It’s-- it’s Gary Jennings, okay, and don’t tell me to breathe-- I-- sorry--- I just--” His chest is constricting and he can barely speak anymore and tears are burning at the edges of his eyes. He jams a knuckle into his mouth and bites down, hard.

(Something is wrong.)

“What’s going on?” The voice has changed now, wary and almost accusing.

Amy lifts her head, eyes glazed with pain and unshed tears, breath shaking in and out and in and out. “Is he…?”

“What was that?” Jake demands across the line. “Is someone hurt?”

Gary chokes out a sob. “It’s-- it’s the sergeant, detective Peralta, it’s Amy Santiago, it’s--”

“What the fuck is going on? Who the fuck--”

(He leaps out of his chair, pen clattering to the ground. Everything is blank and empty and everyone is staring at him, rushing to his side, but he doesn’t see anyone, all he can see is blood staining the deep blue of a sergeant’s uniform and the life draining out of dark brown eyes.)

“Jake,” Amy calls out from the ground, so soft that even Gary can hardly hear her. “Jake…”

The officer presses his hand over the wound and tries not to let the jolt in his stomach overtake him. “Get here fast, please, I--”

“How could you let this happen?” he spits from across the line, and Gary squeezes his eyes shut tight.

“I--”

“I- I don’t care, I can’t care-- Where the hell are you?”

(He doesn’t even bother to put on his jacket when they give him the alley name, just rushes into his crappy, beat-up car, no weapons, no backup, no anything. He doesn’t give a damn if he gets shot, so long as Amy gets to live.)

* * *

“Gary,” Amy says softly, and the officer starts and turns to her. Even with her blurred vision she can see the tears shining in his eyes, matching hers. _I’ve never called him by his actual name before,_ she realizes, somewhere in between breaths, and something twists inside her.

He inches closer, squeezing her other hand tight enough for it to ache, but she doesn’t care. “Yes, sergeant?” Gary asks. Her heart clenches guiltily when she sees the blood on his hands and staining his uniform (he takes so much pride in his uniform, she knows, has seen him smiling at himself in the mirror, adjusting every little button, dusting off the shoulders, fixing the collar).

She breathes in as slow and even as she can, watches him flinch like he’s scared she won’t ever inhale again. “I’m proud of you,” Amy murmurs, and she tries in vain to keep the tears from falling again, streaking through the blood and dirt on her cheeks. “I’m so, so proud. And if I--”

“You won’t--”

“If I do, Gary.” A weak squeeze of the hand, a tired, empty smile. “I want you to know that---” she gasps in sudden pain, “it’s not your fault. You’re going to do such good things, Gary--”

“Don’t, sergeant, please don’t--”

She smiles as much as she can, lips cracking open and bleeding. “Not yet. I’m waiting for-- someone.” Amy chuckles wearily, as if it was a joke, and lets her head rest back down against the gravel. “Don’t be afraid.”

As if on cue, the screeching of brakes.

A car peels into the alley, skidding to a stop just at the entrance. A man gets out before the car even fully stops, throwing the door open and leaping out, racing over the pavement and staggering to a stop, dropping to his knees.

“How long as she been like this?” he asks, and for the first time, Gary looks Jake Peralta full in the eyes, sees the conflict there.

(He wants to be removed, he wants this to be like any other dying person he’s seen in his near-decade of police work, but it’s not, it’s Amy Santiago, it’s his _wife,_ and she’s bleeding out in a lonely alley, and God, this is not how it’s supposed to end, he cannot end like this, because if she ends most of him will end with her, here on the pavement with blood on his hands and a beat cop crouching next to him, scared out of his mind.)

“I don’t know--” he checks his watch, on habit, as if he hasn’t been counting every second, every breath, “--around twenty-one minutes?”

“Too long,” Jake mutters. “Have you called an ambulance?”

A flood of relief rushes through Gary, a flood of _thank goodness I did something right today._ “Of course, sir, just after I called you.”  
  
The detective exhales long and hard, eyes fluttering shut. He stays like that for a moment, kneeling next to Amy.

Her eyes flicker open, and Gary can see the soft smile just barely twitching at the edge of her lips before fading away. “Hey,” she whispers, a hand wandering up to cup Jake’s cheek, before falling limply. The other man catches it in his own hand and holds on tight.

“You’re gonna be okay, Ames. I know you will.”

She snorts softly and closes her eyes again. “You don’t know that, Peralta.”

“Ames, if you’re gonna make me argue with you right now--” A watery smile is appearing on the other man’s face, and he shakes his head, pressing their intertwined hands to his forehead. Through the blood and grime, Gary can see the spark of his sergeant’s wedding ring in the light.

“I love you,” Amy says, so soft that the officer thinks he might have imagined it, and the pain and sorrow and terror is gone from her face, replaced with a tender, aching love that makes Gary look away and Jake sob outright.

“I love you so much, Ames, please, just hold on until the ambulance gets here, please don’t leave me, I love you--”

And so it goes.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Tap, tap, tap.

Taptaptap.

_Taptaptap._

Jake presses his lips against his wife’s forehead, hot and damp and sticky with blood. “Stay here.”

She says nothing, quiet breaths rattling in and out with an effort that claws at his heart, but he thinks, maybe, her weak, shaking hand holds his a little tighter.

**Author's Note:**

> hello everyone, I really hope you enjoyed (??) that. I left it open ended so you could fill in the blanks with whatever you thought fit the story best, but on the insistence of Emily I’ll probably end up writing a happy ending attached to this mess. 
> 
> anyways, leave a comment or a kudos if you feel like it, and of course thank you so much for reading!!


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